Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue by Paula Danziger Read Free Book Online Page B

choices, not ones like this.
    The ones I want to make are things like ….. Should I have chocolate or vanilla ice cream? If I get a new bike, how manyspeeds should it have? Should my allowance be raised? Should I have to do homework, or not have to do homework?
    Now, these are good choices for a kid to make … not the ones that I have to make … choosing one parent instead of the other.
    “OK.” My mother sighs and stands up. “Philip, I’ll have Amber ready to be picked up here at three-thirty. Her bags will be packed. Just let us know what kind of clothes she’ll need … and write down all the information I’ll need … where to contact you, what the phone number is … and I’ll give you the same.”
    All of a sudden, my life has gotten much more involved … much more organized.
    My father stands up. “OK.”
    When my mother picks up the dishes to put in the dishwasher, my father offers to do it.
    She shakes her head. “No, Philip, you are a guest in my home. I’ll do it.”
    They look at each other.
    I bet they are thinking about when he wasn’t a guest in her home, when this was his home, too.
    They must be thinking about that because I, Amber Brown, am.
    “Thank you, Sarah,” he says. “Thank you for everything.”
    While she is putting the dishes away, I walk Dad out to the living room and to the door.
    He leans downs and gives me a hug. “Amber, I am so happy that we are going to be spending Thanksgiving together.”
    I just stand there.
    He says, “You feel bad that you’re not going to be able to spend Thanksgiving with your mom, right?”
    I nod.
    “I can understand that.” He looks at me. “Would you rather go with Mom? I want you to do what you want to do, not what you think you should.”
    “Dad,” I say, “I made my decision. I don’t want to think about it anymore. What I wanted was not to have to decide … but I did … because you and Mom made the decision to get divorced, to not be a family anymore.”
    “Maybe that’s why I want you to think about it before
your
decision is final,” he says.
    I try to figure out what he means by what he’s just said. Does that mean that he’s sorry he and Mom got divorced? Does it just mean that he knows it’s important to make the right decision, because being divorced has been good?
    Grown-ups. Grown-ups who are parents. Grown-ups who are
my parents
…. It’s all very confusing.
    I think about what Justin once said….You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose … but you can’t pick your friends’ noses….
    Well, I didn’t get to pick my parents.
    I am glad that I have them, though.
    I just wish that I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life picking one of them and not the other.

Chapter
Fourteen

    Dear Justin,
    Guess what??????!!!!!!!!!!
    My dad’s moved back from Paris.
    You probably already knew that, because my mom tells your mom everything.
    I’m glad our moms are still best friends and phone each other all the time and write each other.
    Thanks for sending the picture of you at Halloween. (I know that your mom was the one who sent the picture, but I love the way that you wrote on it….. “I am Dracula … and I want to bite your neck … butI’d probably get rabies.”)
    My dad and I went to New York for Thanksgiving.
    It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun.
    We stayed at a hotel. (They had mail chutes on each floor. It was soooooo cool to watch as the mail went down ….. the chutes were glass. One morning I saw a pancake going down. I don’t want to think what the mail looked like when that splattered on it.)
    On Thanksgiving Eve, we went over to the American Museum of Natural History….. Oh, Justin, it was sooooooooooooooo fun. I wish that you had been there. It’s called “Inflation Night,” and on either side of the museum, people were blowing upthe balloons that are in the parade. I heard someone say, “Just think of Barney as half full instead of half empty.”

    You should have seen